UP: More tainted candidates were elected in 2012 than 2007

Bangalore, July 11: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that lawmakers convicted of any crime will be disqualified immediately. The move has been welcomed by the common people as they hope that this could be a decisive step towards the cleaning up the system.

The judiciary's step speaks about a desperation to improve the state of affairs, but what if the people of a state chooses a more tainted party to form a government in an election?

Take for example, the case of Uttar Pradesh. As per National Election Watch information on www.myneta.info, if we compare the 2007 state election with the 2012 one, we see that the number of winning candidates with declared criminal cases has increased from 142 to 189 in an assembly of 403 seats (an increase by 12 per cent). Those with declared serious criminal charges increased from 75 to 98 (an increase by five per cent).

In terms of qualification of the winning candidates also, the situation in 2012 was worse than it was five years ago. While 249 winning candidates were graduates or above in 2007 (62 per cent), the number went down to 239 in 2012 (59 per cent) although the number of crorepati winners jumped from 126 to 271 (by 36 per cent) between 2007 and 2012.

While Mayawati's BSP won 206 seats in the 2007 elections, Mulayam Singh's SP won 224 seats in 2012. What is even more staggering is that over 100 of the winning candidates out of the 189 in 2012 belong to the SP.

Why do people choose tainted candidates? It is important to find the reason for that. Just a verdict from the top can't clean up the system.

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